First of all, the MP3 patents are software patents and as such are not valid in Europe. The base MP3 patent is on quantising a sound signal and then iteratively executing a (the patent doesn't mention which) mathematical function over these quantised values until they can be represented using the desired number of bits. That's it, it's not any more specific.
Now, suppose we would get software patents, then this article would allow you to use an mp3 decoder to connect some audio aparatus to another one which only outputs sound in MP3 format. It will not allow encoders, unless they are only used for encoding sound which is then fed into something which can accept only mp3 encoded audio. So it also won't allow plain mp3 players (I don't think that the argument "I want to make my MP3's interoperable with my earbuds" would hold).
It really is a restriction to make sure that a company with a dominant market position cannot exclude everyone else by making all of the interfaces of its machine depend on patented technology and thus doing a vender lock-in (since compatitors cannot make any compatible devices).
Jonas
Actually, patents explicitly give you a temporary state-granted monopoly on the applications of your invention described in the patent claims. It has nothing to do with how patents are written, it's inherent to the way patents work.
So why give patents? The assumption is that what society gets in return for this monopoly (the working of this patented invention, and the fact that the innovator gets a reward for his work will encourage more innovation) weighs up against this negative effect.
The big problem with software patents is that these positive effects do not weigh up against the negative effects. See this MIT study on the effect of software patents in the US and the open letter from a number of distinguished economists to the European Parliament. It's simply a matter of striking the right balance between the positive and negative effects, and in software the negative effects far ouweugh the good ones.
As JPHM already mentioned above, I've been here in the European Parliament in Strasbourg since Monday lobbying. I haven't slept last night at all because, together with other people (hi Xavi, Tino, James and Hartmut:), I was making the final voting recommendations of ffii.org. We distributed a paper version of this voting list this morning and also had an MEP mail it to all other MEPs so they all could look at it and use it if they wanted.
In general, pretty much all important amendments to the articles were incorporated. There is a lot of patch-up work to do and in its current form, the directive is a complete mess because of this, but the basic line has been completely turned around.
Yesterday, Commissioner Bolkestein was still complaining that we (the opponents) were trying to destroyt the directive and warned against voting against the directive, because it would not fix the current legal uncertainty (software patents are being granted but not enforceable before a court of law as they are illegal). Today, rumors are doing rounds that the Commission is considering retracting the directive, because it was so successfully amended by us.
Finally, I would like to say that our lobbyiong in general has absolutely nothing to do with open source or Free Software. We simply think software patents would be bad for all SME's, independent developers and innovation/society as a whole. Of course, there are a lot of free software in the independent developers category (and especially in the Free Software category, quite a few people concerned with society as well).
Being stamped"linux junkies that want everything to be free/gratis" corner is however the last thing we want (our opponents have tried that, and failed until now since they have no basis that supports their claims), and we having backing from several commercial closed source companies (such as Opera Software).
Especially if they stay until 4 am and later in the Parliament to finish a final voting list and put it in the MEPs offices for the vote of the next day:)
L&H was a Belgian company, but that's close enough I guess. And in case you missed it, they also successfully sued IBM. There was nothing to settle in European courts, since it was about software patents, which are not yet enforceable here (otherwise IBM would have countersued).
I'm going to reply only once more, because unfortunately it's become clear I've been had by a well crafted troll (consider that a compliment, if you wish).
I prefer to adapt the EPO to the needs of European industry. It is not the EPO which is being "creative with the law," it is the clients of the EPO - primarily European industry - who frustrated by the limitations of the EPC are the ones forced to be "creative."
I will say it once more: 75% of the European software patents are in hands of US and Japanese companies. So it's not primarily the European industry that are trying to get this kind of patents, it's the US one.
It is my experience that the EPO follows the letter of the EPC. They are actually rather picky about this. Accusing them of being "creative with the law" does them a gross disservice.
You obviously have never talked to people from the EPO. Also, if they were not being creative with the law, then why is it that software patents can't be enforced in European courts? Because the courts don't understand the law, while the EPO does?
The issue which we are discussing is European patents where - due to the current prohibition against software patents - neither American, nor Japanese companies have any lead whatsoever.
I'm going to spell it out once more:
Software patents are currently unenforceable in Europe.
Nevertheless, the EPO has been giving them out.
Of those currently unenforceable software patents, 75% is currently in hands of US and Japanese companies.
If software patents were legalised, then all those already granted patents would be enforceable, which indeed would give those foreign companies a lead.
What I want to achieve is parity. Following the lead of the United States of America with regard to software patents would seem to me to be the way to go.
Maybe it would seem so, but it wouldn't. As other people have said, the current US monoliths became what they are now during a time in which there were no software patents. Software patents reduce R&D spending, and increase legal costs.
In addition to the excellent remarks made by AC and jsebrech, there are a few more things I'd like to add:
You may rely on theoretical studies by economists which opine that patents stifle innovation, I, on the other hand, have seen first hand - with my own eyes - a staggering amount of innovation from engineers resulting purely from the existence of patents.
The MIT study is not a theoretical study, it's a study of reality as it exists in the US. Fact: after the introduction of software patents in the US, the R&D budgets of the large software companies declined by 10 to 15%. These funds were then used to fund the legal departments, to patent stuff, sue, countersue and defend in court.
Further, while you may gain some innovation because of the existence of patents, you also lose a lot. After all, all the time spent on working around patents on existing ideas could have been spent on inventing new stuff, based on these existing ideas. Informatics is almost entirely about complementary and sequential innovation. Patents seriously hamper this, as these kind of innovations are most likely infringing on patents on the original idea, since they build on it.
I would like to point out that, despite your objections, the EPO has been issuing "software" patents for many years.
I know.
It actually requires very little imagination for attorneys to add technical effect sufficient to overcome examiner's objections
I know, pretty much everything you can do in software is considered a technical effect.
- entirely in accordance with the EPC.
You mean "entirely in accordance with the EPO's completely warped interpretation of the EPC". The EPC states that "computer programs as such" are not patentable. What they meant, was that even though you can't get a patent on a computer program, the fact that an otherwise patentable (technical) invention includes software does not suddenly render the whole thing not patentable. However, the EPO has twisted this into "if a program has a technical effect, it must be patentable". I'll explain the problem with this reasoning.
Suppose you have a weaving machine, and you have to make sure some knives are turned at exactly a certain angle relative to the thread and cut it at exactly the right moment. You install several sensors, feed their data into a computer and the software on this computer takes care of everything. The EPO interpretes this software as having a technical effect and as such as a patentable invention. This is wrong, because the invention does not lie in the fact that they process the sensor data with software or that they steer a weaving machine with software, but in the fact that they determined how to place the knives, how to determine the time when to cut and how to construct a machine that can do this. The software is merely a means to this end, and does not contain any invention.
So you have the software, which protected by copyright, and the weaving machine, which is protected by patent law. With software patents, you have also the fact that you control the inventive weaving machine using a computer program, which is then protected by a software patent. That's another reason why software patents are so bad: most of the time, they don't even protect some kind of innovation, but just the fact that you do something with software. These patents are not necessarily trivial (e.g., the software patent for this weaving machine control mechanism may include the descriptions of the positions of the knives, timings, sensors etc.), but the software itself simply has nothing to do with the inventive work, that all happened when designing the weaving machine.
The proposed amendment which you oppose is simply a codification of the de facto situation which already exists at the EPO.
I'm not opposing an amendment, I'm opposing the whole dir
why, pray tell, should such inventions not be worthy of european patent protection?
This has nothing to do with worthiness. The European patent system wasn't designed to make sure innovators are rewarded for their trouble, but to spur the progress of innovation as much as possible. As scientific studies and economists (Google cache, site seems to be down) show, patents do not help innovation in software at all, they actually hamper it.
for a small company, patents are often the ONLY tools they have to keep from being steamrolled by their larger rivals.
This has to be one of the most prevailing misconceptions that pro-swpat people spread. First of all, keep in mind we are currently in the situation where Europe does not have enforceable software patents and has lots of small software development companies, while the US has software patents and mainly huge monoliths. Also, EU software (or other) companies can get software patents in the US and enforce them there at this time without ay problem. Now:
Situation A, no software patents in Europe (as it is now): Small Company has a great idea, creates a product, sells it. Big Company sees idea, copies it, sells it. Depending on the quality and marketing of Big Company's product and the ability of Small Company to keep innovating and possibly finding a niche market that can sustain its operatrion, Small Company may or may not go broke. No matter what, Small Company can get a software patent in the US and use that to extract money from Big Company in the US.
Sitation B, software patents in Europe (as proposed): Small Company has a great idea, patents it, creates a product, sells it. Big Company sees idea, copies it, sells it. Small Company sues Big Company for patent infringement. Big Company looks at Small company's product, and sees it infringes on 10 software patents of theirs. The companies settle in a cross-licensing deal, with Small Company possibly paying also an undisclosed amount for usage of the patents from Big Company.
Note that Situation B is not something I just made up, that's how IBM currently behaves in the US. How does introducing software patents in Europe help small European companies defend themselves against big foreign companies, especially since those foreign companies own the majority of the already granted software patents? (75% of the 30,000 already granted ones are in hands of US and Japanese companies)
The only type of small companies that can get easily rich via software patents, are those that do not develop any products. They just patent an idea and then go to big (and possibly also small) companies asking for money, knowing that they can't infringe on any of the other party's patents. This may be an innovative way of making money, but that's not the kind of innovation that the patent system in Europe is supposed to promote.
framing the debate "against" software patents purely on the grounds that the EPO may, in error, issue invalid patents does not, in my opinion, reflect an impressive level of education on the part of EU lobbyists. it rather reflects an astonishing ignornace about today's ecomomic realitities.
Maybe you've seen only that side of the debate, but there are many other sides. When I speak to MEPs, the silly trivial examples of patents granted by the EPO are handy to have, but that's not what the discussion is about. It's mostly about how introducing software patents would not help the European economy at all, how software patents deter innovation and completely undermine the copyright protection that software has (you may think that copyr
Patentability of hardware is a well accepted principal. But what if the hardware contains software? For instance when it's a cellphone. Should the hardware still be patentable?
The European Patent convention explicitly states that computer programs as such are not patentable. This means that adding software to something does not make something suddenly unpatentable. The opponents of software patents are not asking for this to be changed.
What if the phone is only special because of functionality implemented in the software portion? For instance if it can talk to a Jabber server. Should it then be patentable because of the special features?
No, because they're entirely realised in software. Otherwise, since the phone has a built-in processor that's simply executing some code which allows it to talk to a Jabber service, you would just have patented the ability of talking to Jabber services on any kind of computer.
There is no inherent difference between programming a cpu that's inside a cell phone and one that's inside a desktop PC. Yes, you have less memory and speed available, but if that's a criterium, then any kind of software improvement that causes less memory to be used or more computing efficiency would have to be patentable.
Having organised a couple of meetings on the issue in Cambridge, I'm of the opinion that the case that the directive is damaging is overstated.
The author of the language of the amendments introduced in JURI says that by the nature of the EU system the language can't be very tight, but that a key feature is that patentability can now be reviewed by the courts, and that JURI has made its wishes clear in the Recital,
Absolutely, like saying that a "computer-implemented invention must make a technical contribution in order to be patentable", then correctly deleting article 3 which said
Member States shall ensure that a
computer-implemented invention is
considered to belong to a field of
technology.
and then introducing an amendment to recital 12 which says
Accordingly, even though a
computer-implemented invention belongs
by virtue of its very nature to a field of
technology,
The JURI amendments were full of that kind of silly tricks.
which courts use as a guide to the intention.
The average cost of a court case in the US to get an invalid patent declared invalid, lies between 1 and 2 million USD. Suppose that for some reason in Europe it would even only cost 1/4th of that. What will companies pick when they can choose between a licensing deal of EUR 50,000 or such a lawsuit? I really don't think it's a good argument to say "We must keep the law as unclear as possible and let case law figure everything out."
There is still a crucial issue of how Free and Open Source software authors are protected. The directive is inadequate in this regard, but then the situation as it stands is inadequate. We need to take a social decision that protects authors of Free and Open software because they make the efforts of their labours available without charge and that's to the benefit of society.
The directive is not worse for Free Software than it is for small companies. Neither have the means to obtain the defensive patent portfolio you need to survive in an economical system that allows software patents. Making an exception for Free or Open Source software could actually help monopolies. Microsoft would probably grasp this chance with both hands to crush anyone with an annoying patent they can't get a license for: just release a mediocre product based on that idea that's open source until the other person is squash
I particularly liked her example of a UK company for whom, filing for patents is an excellent idea, lest a US multi-national will just steal the idea and patent it themselves...ahem prior art!
The company they're referring to is Allvoice Computing from Devon, UK. A thorough analysis of the Allvoice situation can be found here.
If you don't want to read that much, the bottom line is this: Allvoice managed to squeeze money out of IBM and a division of the then still dying Lernout&Hauspie, with it's patent on an interface between speech recognition software and word processors (allowing you to correct mistakes made by the speech recognition software).
Nice detail those Labour MEPs (read: McCarthy sock puppets, as they're just sending our her standard letter) leave out: both of those lawsuits were filed in the US and won based on US software patents held by Allsoft. They hold similar patents in Europe, but here they aren't enforceable yet (as software patents are still illegal here for the time being). In fact, should we have had software patents in Europe, IBM would probably have countersued faster than you can say "screwed" for infringement on one of the thousands of software patents it owns.
So not having software patents in Europe is a strategic advantage to European companies: as long as they don't sell their software in the US, they can obtain and enforce software patents in US against US companies without fearing to be countersued. I.e., they can play leech in the US...
Your analysis of the second scenario is broken. First of all, Eurosoft has no reason to doubt that ti's trivial patent will be granted in the US. Secondly, Eurosoft can't be attacked by AmeriSoft based on patent infringement claims in Europe, which is its home base. Amerisoft otoh can be attacked by Eurosoft in the US, and if Eurosoft doesn't sell it's product in the US (yet), Amerisoft won't have anyway to defend itself using its own patent portfolio.
Not having software patents in Europe, but having them in the US is a strategic advantage for European companies. They can then even take on IBM, just like Eolas took on Microsoft (Eolas doesn't develop anything itself, so Microsoft couldn't find any of its own patents on which Eolas could infringe). I'm not advocating this kind of business strategy (in fact, I am strongly against this kind of leeching), but it may help in getting rid of swpat in the US as well.
Keep in mind it's mainly the BSA that's pushing for software patents in Europe (a leaked word document with one of the first drafts of the directive, had the name of the European head of the BSA in the author field).
It's not the amount of protesters, it's the message. We explicitly focussed on simple economical arguments that everyone can understand (e.g. 30,000 already illegally granted software patents in Europe, 75% of which are owned by US companies -> legalising those = bad for European companies). 400 people is enough to get media attention, and if you then have something more to say than just "software patents are bad because then I can run my Free GNU/Linux anymore", it can have quite an impact.
It's especially telling that the pro-swpat lobby did very little effort to refute our arguments or even to simply discredit us (e.g. calling us zealots that only want all software to be free/gratis). There were some weak attempts, but very few.
Proponents wanted to delay the vote because they knew they couldn't win. Opponents wanted to delay it because they thought they could get even more support. And a lot of MEPs are still undecided.
Unfortunately, that amendment won't fix anything. It's always the same thing they're talking about: technical. Please read this post to see how technical is (not) defined and how gets is interpreted by the European Patent Office.
Yes, the vote has been postponed till the plenary meeting of 22nd September. The reasons are that the major political fractions (conservatives, socialists and liberals) are all divided on the issue... with more and more coming to our (anti-swpat) side as time passes by:)
You're entirely correct that it sounds very sensible when you first read it. The reason is that you interpret the terms that they use differently than they do. The two main ones are:
Industrial application: the EPO interprets this as "usable in a way that makes money". Don't believe me? One of the biggest proponents of software patents said so himself in the JURI meeting, when other proponents mentioned they were afraid that this requirement would exclude too many software patents.
Technical effect: first of all, the "normal physical interaction between a program and the computer" is nowhere defined. Furhter, technical is also nowhere defined (and they don't want to define it, they say it has to follow from case law). In other words, you need anundefined effect apart from something which is not defined, so what could that be? Plenty of things, it turns out (see the heading "When is something technical"). Examples: processing data representing an image, saving memory, increasing speed, using computers instead of humans to process secret/private/sensitive data and automating a known process if the automated process provides surprising speed or economy of scale benefits.
Keep in mind that the directive is designed to legalise all software patents that have been illegally granted until now by the EPO. You can find some examples of patents which such "technical effects" here and here.
For information on her other claims, please read the the English translation of the letter I sent to most Flemish MEPs, as well as this short overview of why software patents are bad.
Actually, the ppc remains harder to to hack, because it has a weakly consistent memory model. If you perform a buffer overflow attack that injects new in the target system, then you have to execute an isync instruction to synchronize the processor instruction cache with the new memory contents. Otherwise, when you jump to your new code, the old code (or whatever was at that address) may be executed. This requires you to know an address where you can find such an instruction and a way to jump back to your new code after executing it.
Ok, as I said in my original post, I also think it's not fit at all to be simply put up as a replacement page (at most, it might be linked to from such a page for people who want more info). That's something different than preaching to the choir, however. I think you also have to take care not to become too sensationalist, because then you lose credibility.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. I think the patents on e-commerce are quite convincing. The behaviour of IBM too. All statements that can be interpreted as purely my opinion are backed up with links. It's organised as answers to the questions why the patents are bad for most people and who does benefit from them (as there must be people like that, otherwise it wouldn't have any supporters). I'm not sure how you can better inform the uninformed than with a short Q&A page, and why that would be construed as "preaching to the choir".
PS: note that I'm not offended, I'm simply curious why you think it's mainly preaching to the choir.
This page can maybe be used as a basis to draft something like you propose. It's way to lengthy as just a splash page though, imho. It won't be easy to get the whole problem wrapped up in one paragraph.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, suppose we would get software patents, then this article would allow you to use an mp3 decoder to connect some audio aparatus to another one which only outputs sound in MP3 format. It will not allow encoders, unless they are only used for encoding sound which is then fed into something which can accept only mp3 encoded audio. So it also won't allow plain mp3 players (I don't think that the argument "I want to make my MP3's interoperable with my earbuds" would hold).
It really is a restriction to make sure that a company with a dominant market position cannot exclude everyone else by making all of the interfaces of its machine depend on patented technology and thus doing a vender lock-in (since compatitors cannot make any compatible devices). Jonas
So why give patents? The assumption is that what society gets in return for this monopoly (the working of this patented invention, and the fact that the innovator gets a reward for his work will encourage more innovation) weighs up against this negative effect.
The big problem with software patents is that these positive effects do not weigh up against the negative effects. See this MIT study on the effect of software patents in the US and the open letter from a number of distinguished economists to the European Parliament. It's simply a matter of striking the right balance between the positive and negative effects, and in software the negative effects far ouweugh the good ones.
In general, pretty much all important amendments to the articles were incorporated. There is a lot of patch-up work to do and in its current form, the directive is a complete mess because of this, but the basic line has been completely turned around.
Yesterday, Commissioner Bolkestein was still complaining that we (the opponents) were trying to destroyt the directive and warned against voting against the directive, because it would not fix the current legal uncertainty (software patents are being granted but not enforceable before a court of law as they are illegal). Today, rumors are doing rounds that the Commission is considering retracting the directive, because it was so successfully amended by us.
Finally, I would like to say that our lobbyiong in general has absolutely nothing to do with open source or Free Software. We simply think software patents would be bad for all SME's, independent developers and innovation/society as a whole. Of course, there are a lot of free software in the independent developers category (and especially in the Free Software category, quite a few people concerned with society as well).
Being stamped"linux junkies that want everything to be free/gratis" corner is however the last thing we want (our opponents have tried that, and failed until now since they have no basis that supports their claims), and we having backing from several commercial closed source companies (such as Opera Software).
Especially if they stay until 4 am and later in the Parliament to finish a final voting list and put it in the MEPs offices for the vote of the next day :)
L&H was a Belgian company, but that's close enough I guess. And in case you missed it, they also successfully sued IBM. There was nothing to settle in European courts, since it was about software patents, which are not yet enforceable here (otherwise IBM would have countersued).
- Software patents are currently unenforceable in Europe.
- Nevertheless, the EPO has been giving them out.
- Of those currently unenforceable software patents, 75% is currently in hands of US and Japanese companies.
- If software patents were legalised, then all those already granted patents would be enforceable, which indeed would give those foreign companies a lead.
Maybe it would seem so, but it wouldn't. As other people have said, the current US monoliths became what they are now during a time in which there were no software patents. Software patents reduce R&D spending, and increase legal costs. welcome our new American overlords. Thank you.The MIT study is not a theoretical study, it's a study of reality as it exists in the US. Fact: after the introduction of software patents in the US, the R&D budgets of the large software companies declined by 10 to 15%. These funds were then used to fund the legal departments, to patent stuff, sue, countersue and defend in court.
Further, while you may gain some innovation because of the existence of patents, you also lose a lot. After all, all the time spent on working around patents on existing ideas could have been spent on inventing new stuff, based on these existing ideas. Informatics is almost entirely about complementary and sequential innovation. Patents seriously hamper this, as these kind of innovations are most likely infringing on patents on the original idea, since they build on it.
I know.
I know, pretty much everything you can do in software is considered a technical effect.
You mean "entirely in accordance with the EPO's completely warped interpretation of the EPC". The EPC states that "computer programs as such" are not patentable. What they meant, was that even though you can't get a patent on a computer program, the fact that an otherwise patentable (technical) invention includes software does not suddenly render the whole thing not patentable. However, the EPO has twisted this into "if a program has a technical effect, it must be patentable". I'll explain the problem with this reasoning.
Suppose you have a weaving machine, and you have to make sure some knives are turned at exactly a certain angle relative to the thread and cut it at exactly the right moment. You install several sensors, feed their data into a computer and the software on this computer takes care of everything. The EPO interpretes this software as having a technical effect and as such as a patentable invention. This is wrong, because the invention does not lie in the fact that they process the sensor data with software or that they steer a weaving machine with software, but in the fact that they determined how to place the knives, how to determine the time when to cut and how to construct a machine that can do this. The software is merely a means to this end, and does not contain any invention.
So you have the software, which protected by copyright, and the weaving machine, which is protected by patent law. With software patents, you have also the fact that you control the inventive weaving machine using a computer program, which is then protected by a software patent. That's another reason why software patents are so bad: most of the time, they don't even protect some kind of innovation, but just the fact that you do something with software. These patents are not necessarily trivial (e.g., the software patent for this weaving machine control mechanism may include the descriptions of the positions of the knives, timings, sensors etc.), but the software itself simply has nothing to do with the inventive work, that all happened when designing the weaving machine.
I'm not opposing an amendment, I'm opposing the whole dir
This has nothing to do with worthiness. The European patent system wasn't designed to make sure innovators are rewarded for their trouble, but to spur the progress of innovation as much as possible. As scientific studies and economists (Google cache, site seems to be down) show, patents do not help innovation in software at all, they actually hamper it.
This has to be one of the most prevailing misconceptions that pro-swpat people spread. First of all, keep in mind we are currently in the situation where Europe does not have enforceable software patents and has lots of small software development companies, while the US has software patents and mainly huge monoliths. Also, EU software (or other) companies can get software patents in the US and enforce them there at this time without ay problem. Now:
Note that Situation B is not something I just made up, that's how IBM currently behaves in the US. How does introducing software patents in Europe help small European companies defend themselves against big foreign companies, especially since those foreign companies own the majority of the already granted software patents? (75% of the 30,000 already granted ones are in hands of US and Japanese companies)
The only type of small companies that can get easily rich via software patents, are those that do not develop any products. They just patent an idea and then go to big (and possibly also small) companies asking for money, knowing that they can't infringe on any of the other party's patents. This may be an innovative way of making money, but that's not the kind of innovation that the patent system in Europe is supposed to promote.
Maybe you've seen only that side of the debate, but there are many other sides. When I speak to MEPs, the silly trivial examples of patents granted by the EPO are handy to have, but that's not what the discussion is about. It's mostly about how introducing software patents would not help the European economy at all, how software patents deter innovation and completely undermine the copyright protection that software has (you may think that copyr
The European Patent convention explicitly states that computer programs as such are not patentable. This means that adding software to something does not make something suddenly unpatentable. The opponents of software patents are not asking for this to be changed.
No, because they're entirely realised in software. Otherwise, since the phone has a built-in processor that's simply executing some code which allows it to talk to a Jabber service, you would just have patented the ability of talking to Jabber services on any kind of computer.
There is no inherent difference between programming a cpu that's inside a cell phone and one that's inside a desktop PC. Yes, you have less memory and speed available, but if that's a criterium, then any kind of software improvement that causes less memory to be used or more computing efficiency would have to be patentable.
I don't think so. Have you looked at how http://swpat.ffii.org/players/ibm/#gajn in the US?
Absolutely, like saying that a "computer-implemented invention must make a technical contribution in order to be patentable", then correctly deleting article 3 which said
and then introducing an amendment to recital 12 which says
The JURI amendments were full of that kind of silly tricks.
The average cost of a court case in the US to get an invalid patent declared invalid, lies between 1 and 2 million USD. Suppose that for some reason in Europe it would even only cost 1/4th of that. What will companies pick when they can choose between a licensing deal of EUR 50,000 or such a lawsuit? I really don't think it's a good argument to say "We must keep the law as unclear as possible and let case law figure everything out."
The directive is not worse for Free Software than it is for small companies. Neither have the means to obtain the defensive patent portfolio you need to survive in an economical system that allows software patents. Making an exception for Free or Open Source software could actually help monopolies. Microsoft would probably grasp this chance with both hands to crush anyone with an annoying patent they can't get a license for: just release a mediocre product based on that idea that's open source until the other person is squash
If you don't want to read that much, the bottom line is this: Allvoice managed to squeeze money out of IBM and a division of the then still dying Lernout&Hauspie, with it's patent on an interface between speech recognition software and word processors (allowing you to correct mistakes made by the speech recognition software).
Nice detail those Labour MEPs (read: McCarthy sock puppets, as they're just sending our her standard letter) leave out: both of those lawsuits were filed in the US and won based on US software patents held by Allsoft. They hold similar patents in Europe, but here they aren't enforceable yet (as software patents are still illegal here for the time being). In fact, should we have had software patents in Europe, IBM would probably have countersued faster than you can say "screwed" for infringement on one of the thousands of software patents it owns.
So not having software patents in Europe is a strategic advantage to European companies: as long as they don't sell their software in the US, they can obtain and enforce software patents in US against US companies without fearing to be countersued. I.e., they can play leech in the US...
Please read this post to see why it really is that bad.
Not having software patents in Europe, but having them in the US is a strategic advantage for European companies. They can then even take on IBM, just like Eolas took on Microsoft (Eolas doesn't develop anything itself, so Microsoft couldn't find any of its own patents on which Eolas could infringe). I'm not advocating this kind of business strategy (in fact, I am strongly against this kind of leeching), but it may help in getting rid of swpat in the US as well.
Keep in mind it's mainly the BSA that's pushing for software patents in Europe (a leaked word document with one of the first drafts of the directive, had the name of the European head of the BSA in the author field).
It's not the amount of protesters, it's the message. We explicitly focussed on simple economical arguments that everyone can understand (e.g. 30,000 already illegally granted software patents in Europe, 75% of which are owned by US companies -> legalising those = bad for European companies). 400 people is enough to get media attention, and if you then have something more to say than just "software patents are bad because then I can run my Free GNU/Linux anymore", it can have quite an impact.
It's especially telling that the pro-swpat lobby did very little effort to refute our arguments or even to simply discredit us (e.g. calling us zealots that only want all software to be free/gratis). There were some weak attempts, but very few.
Proponents wanted to delay the vote because they knew they couldn't win. Opponents wanted to delay it because they thought they could get even more support. And a lot of MEPs are still undecided.
Unfortunately, that amendment won't fix anything. It's always the same thing they're talking about: technical. Please read this post to see how technical is (not) defined and how gets is interpreted by the European Patent Office.
Yes, the vote has been postponed till the plenary meeting of 22nd September. The reasons are that the major political fractions (conservatives, socialists and liberals) are all divided on the issue... with more and more coming to our (anti-swpat) side as time passes by :)
- Industrial application: the EPO interprets this as "usable in a way that makes money". Don't believe me? One of the biggest proponents of software patents said so himself in the JURI meeting, when other proponents mentioned they were afraid that this requirement would exclude too many software patents.
- Technical effect: first of all, the "normal physical interaction between a program and the computer" is nowhere defined. Furhter, technical is also nowhere defined (and they don't want to define it, they say it has to follow from case law). In other words, you need anundefined effect apart from something which is not defined, so what could that be? Plenty of things, it turns out (see the heading "When is something technical"). Examples: processing data representing an image, saving memory, increasing speed, using computers instead of humans to process secret/private/sensitive data and automating a known process if the automated process provides surprising speed or economy of scale benefits.
Keep in mind that the directive is designed to legalise all software patents that have been illegally granted until now by the EPO. You can find some examples of patents which such "technical effects" here and here.For information on her other claims, please read the the English translation of the letter I sent to most Flemish MEPs, as well as this short overview of why software patents are bad.
Thanks for writing your MEPs, and keep it up!
Actually, the ppc remains harder to to hack, because it has a weakly consistent memory model. If you perform a buffer overflow attack that injects new in the target system, then you have to execute an isync instruction to synchronize the processor instruction cache with the new memory contents. Otherwise, when you jump to your new code, the old code (or whatever was at that address) may be executed. This requires you to know an address where you can find such an instruction and a way to jump back to your new code after executing it.
This is what I prepared for our own site (www.freepascal.org). It may still change somewhat, of course.
Ok, as I said in my original post, I also think it's not fit at all to be simply put up as a replacement page (at most, it might be linked to from such a page for people who want more info). That's something different than preaching to the choir, however. I think you also have to take care not to become too sensationalist, because then you lose credibility.
PS: note that I'm not offended, I'm simply curious why you think it's mainly preaching to the choir.
This page can maybe be used as a basis to draft something like you propose. It's way to lengthy as just a splash page though, imho. It won't be easy to get the whole problem wrapped up in one paragraph.